over. I have thought it best to translate it in the first place as 'loam,' and in the second as 'ground'; for it appears as though the idea were, in the former case, that of what agriculturists call a 'top-dressing,' and thus a substance which could break up the lower soil and make it fruitful. The 'it' which occurs after the colon may refer either to the 'feeling' or to the 'orchestra,' for both are neuter nouns. -TR.
(37) The modern Playwright will feel little tempted to concede that Drama ought not to belong exclusively to his branch of art, the art of Poesy; above all will he not be able to constrain himself to share it with the Tone-poet,- to wit, as he understands us, allow the Play to be swallowed up by the Opera. Perfectly correct!-so long as Opera subsists, the Play must also stand, and, for the matter of that, the Pantomime too; so long as any dispute hereon is thinkable, the Drama of the Future must itself remain un-thinkable. If, however, the Poet's doubt lie deeper, and consist in this, that he cannot conceive how Song should be entitled to usurp entirely the place of spoken dialogue: then he must take for rejoinder, that in two several regards he has not as yet a clear idea of the character of the Art-work of the Future. Firstly, he does not reflect that Music has to occupy a very different position in this Art-work to what she takes in modern Opera: that only where her power is thefittest, has she to open out her full expanse; while, on the contrary, wherever another power, for instance that of dramatic Speech, is the most necessary, she has to subordinate herself to that; still, that Music possesses the peculiar faculty of, without entirely keeping silence, so imperceptibly linking herself to the thought-full element of Speech that she lets the latter seem to walk abroad alone, the while she still supports it. Should the poet acknowledge this, then he has to recognise in the second place, that thoughts and situations to which the lightest and most restrained accompaniment of Music should seem importunate and burdensome, can only be such as are borrowed from the spirit of our modern Play; which, from beginning to end, will find no inch of breathing-space within the Art-work of the Future. The Man who will portray himself in the Drama of the Future has done for ever with all the prosaic hurly-burly of fashionable manners or polite intrigue, which our modern 'poets' have to tangle and to disentangle in their plays, with greatest circumstantiality. His nature-bidden action and his speech are: Yea, yea! and Nay, nay !-and all beyond is evil, i.e. modern and superfluous.-R. WAGNER.
(38) We must beg to be allowed to regard the Tone-poet as included in the Word-poet,-whether personally or by fellowship, is here a matter of indifference. -R. WAGNER.
(39) The terms derived from the root 'dar-stellen '-to set, or show, forth-- have been used throughout this essay so frequently and so variously, that I deem it necessary to call attention to the fact that in English we have no thoroughly satisfactory equivalent. I have, therefore, been obliged to render this concept by distinct expressions : sometimes as 'performer,' again as 'executant,' 'actor,' 'representant,' &c. while in the verbal sense I have taken refuge in 'portray,' 'display,' 'perform,' 'impersonate,' &c.-TR.
(40) If we substitute 'Will' for 'Necessity' in this sentence (see footnote on page 69) we shall here obtain a complete summary of Schopenhauer's system of æsthetics; while, even as it stands, it significantly foreshadows E. von Hartmann's 'Philosophy of the Unconscious. '-TR.
(41) 'Über die als reine Thatsache kein zweifel mehr vorhanden ist'-to translate this sentence literally, 'as a matter of fact,' could only be misleading. Taken apart from the context, it might then beread as a confession of faith in the realistic school; whereas the whole passage shows that Wagner went strongly for a search below the incidental surface for the broad principles of life that govern human action. Witness, that, of the two schemes with which he was at this time busied, Barbarossa and Siegfried, he abandoned the historical in favour of the mythical.- TR.
(42) In the original, the passage runs: 'um der entausserten Nothwendigkeit seines Wesens willen'; it is impossible, however, to convey the idea of 'renunciation' connoted by the term 'entausserung' (as employed in the next sentence) at like time with that of the-so to speak-' turning inside out' of a man's character.-TR.
(43) We must not forget that, only a few months before writing this essay, Wagner had prepared a sketch for a tragedy on the subject of Jesus of Nazareth.-TR,
(44) Whilst we here have only touched upon the Tragic element of the Artwork of the Future, in its evolution out of Life, and by artistic fellowship, we may infer its Comic element by reversing the conditions which bring the Tragic to a natural birth. The hero of the Comedy will he the obverse of the hero of the Tragedy. Just as the one instinctively directed all his actions to his surroundings and his foils-as a Communist, i.e. as a unit who of his inner, free Necessity, and by his force of character, ascends into the Generality-so the other in his rôle of Egoist, of foe to the principle of Generality, will strive to withdraw himself therefrom, or else to arbitrarily direct it to his sole self-interest; hut he will be withstood by this principle of generality in its most multifarious forms, hard pressed by it, and finally subdued. The Egoist will be compelled to ascend into Community; and this will therefore he the virtual enacting, many-headed personality which will ever appear to the action-wishing, but never can.ning, egoist as a capriciously changing Chance; until it fences him around within its closest circle and, without further breathing- space for his self-seeking, hc sees at last his only rescue in the unconditional acknowledgment of its necessity. The artistic Fellowship, as the representative of Generality, will therefore have in Comedy an even directer share in the framing of the poem itself, than in Tragedy.-R. WAGNER.
(45) And especially our modern Theatrical institutions.-R. WAGNER.
(46) 'Stand-rechten,' generally employed to signify a 'court-martial.' The whole group of derivatives from the root-idea of 'standing' reads thus - 'das getreue Abbild des modernen Staates, mit semen Ständen, Anstellungen, Stand rechten, stehenden Heeren-und was sonst noch Alles in ihm stehen möge'; the italics being reproduced from the original.-TR.
(47) See Meistersinger, Act 3.- Walther: 'Wie fang ich nach der Regel an? '-Hans Sachs: 'Ihr stellt sie selbst, und folgt ihr dann.'-TR.
(48) Whosoever is unable to lift himself above his thraldom to the trivial, unnatural system of our Modern Art, will be sure to pose the vapidest of questions anent these details; to throw out doubts; to decline to understand. That he should answer in advance the myriad possible doubts and questions of this sort, no one, surely, will demand of an author who addresses himself above all to the thinking artist, and not to the thick-headed modern art-industrial- no matter whether the latter's literary calling be critical or creative. -R. WAGNER.
(49) It would almost seem that the author had caught a slight foreboding of the character of the latest Parisian 'Commune.'-The Editor. (Tr.- i.e. of the edition of 1872; in other words-Richard Wagner.)
